Tolerance, Free Speech, and the University

I had not been a student at one of our state's large public universities for more than a couple of weeks before I butted up against the liberal orthodoxy. I was unprepared for it and had a lot of difficulty during the two years that I spent at that university because of the pervasive liberalism.

There are two stories in the media right now that each show the lack of tolerance for certain opinions in our nation's universities. (Just ask Lawrence Summers!) The first story (HT: Balaam's Ass) is out of northern Kentucky, not one of the places that I usually think of as a bastion of liberalism. A professor encouraged her students to exercise their freedom of speech by destroying a pro-life display on the campus. She also took part in the destruction. This isn't surprising; but it is very illustrative of the double standard many liberals hold about free speech and tolerance.

The second story is from a regional campus of Ohio State University. A librarian who was part of a group choosing books for incoming freshman was charged with sexual harassment for recommending several conservative books, including The Marketing of Evil. Never mind that the other professors had suggested books written by liberals including Jimmy Carter, intellectual freedom and the discussion of ideas apparently doesn't stretch to conservative ideas.